Best Quotes by Thomas Hobbes (Top 10)
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Curiosity is the lust of the mind.
Thomas Hobbes
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Hell is truth seen too late.
Thomas Hobbes
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The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.
Thomas Hobbes
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Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry... no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Thomas Hobbes
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The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life.
Thomas Hobbes
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The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.
Thomas Hobbes
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Humans are driven by a perpetual and restless desire of power.
Thomas Hobbes
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It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law
Thomas Hobbes
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To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.
Thomas Hobbes
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So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory. The first maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men's persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name.
Thomas Hobbes
More Thomas Hobbes Quotes
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Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.
Thomas Hobbes
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Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
Thomas Hobbes
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Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.
Thomas Hobbes
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I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
Thomas Hobbes
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A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.
Thomas Hobbes
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Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.
Thomas Hobbes
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Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.
Thomas Hobbes
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War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known.
Thomas Hobbes
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All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.
Thomas Hobbes
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They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that dislike it, heresy; and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.
Thomas Hobbes
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Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.
Thomas Hobbes
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Fear of things invisible in the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.
Thomas Hobbes
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The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.
Thomas Hobbes
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Give an inch, he'll take an ell.
Thomas Hobbes
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As a draft-animal is yoked in a wagon, even so the spirit is yoked in this body
Thomas Hobbes
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The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.
Thomas Hobbes
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Prudence is but experience, which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.
Thomas Hobbes
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Opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion to what men fear, and talking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seeds of religion
Thomas Hobbes
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There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.
Thomas Hobbes
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No mans error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.
Thomas Hobbes
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Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.
Thomas Hobbes
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Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter.
Thomas Hobbes
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Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair.
Thomas Hobbes
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Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.
Thomas Hobbes